State Archives

If you’ve pondered the depths of Kartchner Caverns, dipped a toe in Lake Havasu or stalked wildflowers at Catalina State Park, you know the value of Arizona’s Parks system. In this 60th anniversary year of our parks, there’s more to do than just celebrate the 31 natural, historical, cultural and geological sites that give people a chance to fall in love – or stay in love – with our fabulous state.

A bill in the Legislature, House Bill 2369, would eliminate the State Parks Board – which means eliminating the citizen oversight the board was designed to provide . . . The bill passed the House and is now in the Senate. Under the bill, the duties of the Parks Board, which include managing, developing and operating state parks, would go to the Parks director. Streamlining state government is a Republican priority. But the Parks Board serves another popular Republican goal: keeping power with the people and assuring oversight of government bureaucrats.

Assuring a public voice in Parks decisions

The board was the result of a compromise made at the time the State Parks system was created in 1957. The intent was to assure a public voice in decisions. Members are the State Land Commissioner and six people appointed by the governor. Under current law, the six citizen members are required to have a knowledge of outdoor activities, Arizona history and conservation. To assure that stakeholders get representation, the livestock, recreation and tourism industries each get at least one spot on the board. This board is configured to provide valuable oversight from people who have an interest in Arizona’s outdoors.

The questions about Black’s management style, coupled with the increasing popularity of the Parks, are reasons for the board to continue doing the job it was created to do six decades ago. The Legislature should not eliminate the State Parks Board. Arizonans have a deep love of their State Parks, and the Parks Board gives them the opportunity to be part of the decision-making process and to exercise needed oversight.

My Turn: Listening to our critics, you’d never know we invest $6 million each year in Arizona to help conserve species. The Arizona Game and Fish Department conserves and protects the state’s diverse wildlife and promotes safe, compatible outdoor recreation. That’s our mission and we have a long history of successfully managing all 800-plus wildlife species in Arizona.

Political special-interest groups that disagree with the Arizona Game and Fish Commission’s wildlife conservation mission are complaining because we don’t buy into their political agenda.

Our message to agenda-driven ideologues: Work with us.

Listening to the critics, you wouldn’t know that the Game and Fish Commission and the Department invest more than $6 million annually into projects benefiting threatened/endangered species and other non-hunted wildlife. That’s $6 million in on-the-ground conservation, improving the lives of Arizona’s wildlife. We’ll work with any group that will lend a hand.

Here are just a few success stories

Because we collaborated with a coalition of bald-eagle advocates, Arizona’s bald eagles are now plentiful enough to have been delisted from the federal Endangered Species list in 2007. Since delisting, the breeding population has increased by 30 percent, and the average annual fledgling count has gone from 21 in the 1990s to 55 since 2010. This year, a record 65 pairs of adult eagles produced 78 hatchlings.

Endangered Sonoran pronghorn were on the brink of disappearing from the U.S. by 2002, with only 21 remaining in southwest Arizona. Active management by Game and Fish and our partners has increased Arizona’s herd to more than 350 Sonoran pronghorn, and even more in Mexico.

In 1998, there were no Mexican wolves in the wild in Arizona and New Mexico. Since then, Game and Fish has dedicated significant staff and financial resources to bring the wolf back while working to build social tolerance in local communities. By collaborating with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and other agencies, Arizona and New Mexico now host 97 known collared wolves and 18 packs, with 42 natural-born offspring last year alone.

We’ll work with anyone to save species. We also put substantial resources into recovering native fish species with proactive conservation efforts that can reverse the need to list them as endangered. Since 2006, we’ve conducted 300 native fish stockings at 130 sites, helping 18 native species and fostering 112 new native fish populations.

California condors, on the brink of extinction by the early 1980s, now number nearly 430, more than half of which live wild in Arizona, Utah, California and Mexico. Their comeback got an assist from Arizona hunters who voluntarily use non-lead ammo in condor country.

Many other species — desert bighorn sheep, black-footed ferrets, Apache trout, Gould’s turkeys, Chiricahua leopard frogs, and black-tailed prairie dogs to name a few — have benefited from collaborative on-the-ground conservation. We’ve achieved successes because we work with partners who roll up their sleeves and put boots on the ground.

The department will cooperate with any group that values and works toward on-the-ground conservation. We just have difficulty with organizations that focus their resources on rhetoric-laden fundraising letters, scare tactics and litigation. Conservation, like everything in life, only happens when you do the work.

Edward “Pat” Madden is the chairman of the Arizona Game and Fish Commission. Email him at PMadden@azgfd.com.

[Source: Ellen Vojnic, Campe Verde Bugle] — Once again I am reading about the legislature robbing the money allocated to the State Parks system. A large portion of that money comes from voter-approved measures to support our state treasures. How can the elected representatives decide to just take that money for other purposes without putting the matter back before voters?

As stated in the commentary this week, much of our tourism dollars come from folks coming to Arizona to visit our State Parks. We have many very fine parks throughout our state including several right here in the Verde Valley area.

Jerome State Park has been closed for a few months now and not only did the closing not make sense, no money has been saved because the employees were just moved to another park. Lights are still on at night as usual, just NO revenue coming in. How do we continue to elect people (state and federal level) who seem to have their own agenda (or special interest group) at heart and not what is best for Arizona as a whole. No one wants to see people laid off their jobs, but the state government is the largest employer in our state.

Probably the same can be said for the federal government, also. Labor is always the highest cost and the first place you look when trying to save money in a business. Most other expenses are not negotiable. Not only are the State Parks being cut, so has the State Historic Archives been cut off. What a shame! Shame on us all for not protesting sooner and louder!